Coldplay, Ash and Keane - they're the ones who got away from indie label Fierce Panda. But surprisingly, its co-founder Simon Williams isn't bitter, and he's put out a 10th-birthday CD to prove it

Simon Williams likes a good pun. Yet the co-founder of the north London record label Fierce Panda has reined in his enthusiasm for verbal tomfoolery for perhaps the first time since he and two other former music journalists established the label in 1994. Whereas previous Panda compilations have gloried in titles as daft as Listen with Smother, the label's new release, a celebration of 10 years on the wilder fringes of the business, is simply called Decade. Has the man who released first singles by bands now as stratospheric as Coldplay, Ash and Supergrass grown up? "It's a hor- rible, cynical, major-record-company album," Williams says cheerfully. "We've gone through the Panda roster, 250 bands, and said, 'We'll just go for the big bands.' That's a huge step for us." Now, depending on your viewpoint, Williams is either a visionary who performs a vital John the Baptist role for the major